Now that I played a bunch of builds, I can safely say that Meteor Shower is absolutely terrible.
Direct damage T3 procs like Tainted Eruption, Whirlpool, and Oleron’s rage deal more damage in AoE and single target, often have secondary benefits, don’t take 5 years to actually land after proccing, and don’t get screwed over by RNG (Meteor Shower ends up missing way too many projectiles on anything that’s not basically the final boss - it’s a bit of a joke when you proc it on a group of trash mobs and it doesn’t even take most of them below 50% HP).
Hell, I am pretty sure Fissure from the Magi constellation drastically outperforms it, and it’s supposedly a T2 version of it with some of its power budget in its stun.
True, on the other hand it doesn’t just proc on crit like olerons and the whole path has a crap ton of oa options unlike the yellow and purple nodes. The tree alone has a 5% oa node, then there is the 80 oa in abomination.
Never mind viper, hawk, hydra, and chariot. Tons of health, attack speed and life on hit options on the way.
It being on par with olerons would be op imo.
I left out the 20% poison resist node in abomination and the 15% chaos resist node in torch. Those are two of the hardest resists to cap.
A lot of the T3 procs are pretty bad. Blind sage’s sucks and I’m pretty sure the lightning spear is bad too. Most people just take the stats and avoid the proc on those constellations. I do wish they were actually usable though, kind of sad that they are outperformed by t1 and 2 procs
I can infirm the Fissure part. You need to proc it many times with BWC or something before the damage adds up nicely while standing in one place for full effect, no kiting (I am refferering to big boss fights).
About metor shower. I’d normally agree but lately I’ve found that the problem lies with how you gear for the damage you do with it and the debuffs applied before it hits followed by the fact that it’s pretty much on demand proc if it’s on a skill with low cooldown even like Blitz or SS. It’s far more comfortable to use and reliable.
Try it with big conversion to Fire or Elemntal and relevant debuffs (Soalel devo, Agonizing Flames or Elemntal Storm or Black star and /Thermite mines!!<Huge debuff here. It will be much better
Try it with big conversion to Fire or Elemntal and relevant debuffs (Soalel devo, Agonizing Flames or Elemntal Storm or Black star and /Thermite mines!!<Huge debuff here. It will be much better
I tried it with firestrike Pyromancer. Can’t think of a more relevant set of conversions/debuffs than that. It’s still awful. Firestrike’s AoE component clears trash before the meteors land half the time. When it does land, the damage is still pitiful. Maybe if the meteors were more reliable for hitting single targets, it would be a decent damage boost for boss killing.
On my pyro it does about 2700-3400 damage per meteor with 1000DPS burn DoT, which means that it’s about 4000 DPS assuming a meteor hits every second (generous against humanoid targets in my experience). At 60k DPS Firestrike, before factoring in all the other procs… That’s not even a footnote. If the meteors tracked, the same devotion would amount to about 16k DPS (since it shoots a meteor every .2 seconds), which would actually be decent for something.
For comparison, on my lightning/cold damage druid, Leviathan does 6.6k damage per second with a 2k dps dot. Out of the gate it’s already better at everything, before factoring in the slow or the fact that it procs instantly. Then you remember that you can have 2 Leviathan pools out at once. And then you remember that you assigned Whirlwpool to raging tempest and you have 6 pools out.
Like, this is my beef with it. A T3 constellation proc, at least in my other builds, is often an integral component of a character’s build. Ulzuin’s Torch’s meteors are a firecracker by comparison. I find that I am better off taking the point out of it and putting it into a random resist or % life node.
It being on par with olerons would be op imo.
Considering the kind of builds that feature Oleron (Cadence, Bleeds, Savagery, Blademasters), I think it would be fine.
I’ve played with a ~6K Leviathan as well. Leviathan just as Meteor shower requires momentum. You need a way to have at least two or three whirpools under your enemy for it to have a big effect. That is not hard to do indded provided you don’t need to kite tough bosses.
The the damage per meteor is kind of what you state. Can reach upto 4k but you are not taking into considereation that most of the time, one target will be hit by more than 1 metor. And i do mean most of the time. That is why skills like devastation are so strong and though metor shower is not as potent in raw damage it makes up for it with the ability to spam it. You can have a constant stream of metors in a fight pounding a Nemesis and it will be hit by multiple meteors. With good OA and debuff just one meteor can crit well over 12K. Adds up with multiple hits and is on par with Leviathan that can crit with debuffs and good OA around 20K .
Yeah, i find it very underwhelming. The only T3 constellation proc i actually like is mentioned Whirlpool. Solid damage, AOE and it’s awesome with Blade Spirit when it can have two Whirlpools at the same time.
And i completely disagree with the poster that says Spear of the Heavens is good. Underwhelming damage, aoe, pretty much everything. If it dropped more than one spear at a time, more aoe and damage, then maybe it would be good.
It’s by no means a must for a lightning or lightining/aether build but ~15K free damage every 0’5 seconds is good for me provided that one can afford to use it.
Edit: it used to drop more than one spear at a time when time dilation os op and took out Cd on all skills. It was so strong it killed Mad Queen in like 6 seconds.
I tried SOTH with my Aether Sword and Board Battlemage and even at near max level, it was doing around 6k or 7k and i honestly find it rather weak. Whirpool does around the same damage but each tick does that damage and it’s several in a row in rapid sucession
SOTH is probably better with a 2H weapon since the higher weapon damage means more damage but i still find it weak.
I explicitly took that into consideration. Just run around with Meteor on flashbang and study how often it actually hits. Most of the meteors miss unless the target is quite fat. Even the lucky scenario of 3-4 meteors hitting a target every proc (i.e. every 3 seconds) is laughable.
(Devastation has a higher impact radius and a tighter target area. Perhaps that’s the buff shower needs for reliability…)
The momentum comparison doesn’t apply because you only get 1 shower out at a time. 6 Leviathan pools stacked in 1 place is a death zone that deletes trash on contact and noticeably drains boss HP. Even without the summon loophole, Leviathan’s reliability puts it on top against anything that’s not C’Thonian/Undead Nemesis type enemies.
I’ve never personally used SOTH myself, but I have a friend who said similar things with a full lightning savagery build. He told me Widow was doing way more for him, so I don’t have a great perception of the proc. I’m sure you can make it feel impactful in the right build, but I’m guessing the scope of builds that can do that is limited similar to meteor shower.
I tried meteor shower for a while on a ranged character and just felt like it was having no impact. I often killed things before the meteors hit the ground. Unfortunately for bosses it also did little because I often had to kite on that character. Also comparing it to devastation isn’t worthwhile; the devastation meteors fall so much faster than meteor shower’s and it is actually somewhat controllable where they fall.
All this kind of makes me wonder at the point of T3 procs, shouldn’t they be awesome for all the investment it takes to get them? Maybe for some constellations it would be better to just make them give very good stats without having a skill on them, I know I would prefer that.
If you are any sort of lightning build, savagery, primal strike or whatever, having Widow is pretty miuch a given. SOTH is just icing on the cake that may or may not fall within your needs.
If your friend replaced SOTH with Widow of course he was doing really bad damage overall. The debuff from widow is huge and a must for any lightning build.
Months ago I’ve done what you did and arrived to the same conclusion you did and began to avoid Metoer shower. Took first 3 nodes that are great and maybe the 4th for % fire damage. It’s just that with a couple of niche builds i’ve done lately that I found it can do well (as something that is added to the build for damage, not a proc that you relly upon almost completly for damage). So for the most part you are 100% correct, it’s just some situations where you can do well with it.
I fully agree on Leviathan. Like binding it to Blade Spirit and having Belgothan’s Relic will net you even more than 6 pools in prolonged fights and it is devastating. You can Even convert Whirlpool to fire with Warpfire ,which i’ve tried, and it’s totally devastating, and I haven’t even tried it with Thermites because it wasn’t a build that had Demolitionist in it.
Many builds ago, you could clear most of the content with Meteor Shower attached to Flashbang. It was a somewhat legitimate but questionable build. Obviously it had to be nerfed.
I don’t mind the balance passes or tweaking but also feel that Meteor Shower requires less affinity requirements than other T3 constellations, so it shouldn’t have damage on par with whirlpool.
I don’t mind them adding another wave or just buffing the damage slightly. But realistically it will not change much for current fire builds as it’s just another “on attack” proc out of many.
I was theorycrafting Elemental Seeker last night and realised that if you had +100% stun duration, 50% CDR, and 200% cast speed PRM/CT/Frenetic Throw (with Elemental Seeker attached), you could perma-stun most bosses, albeit after 5 seconds usually. I haven’t actually tried this though.
